Beyond the Northern Lights
by Silly Twin Stars
Summary: Maka experiences a devastating loss. When she receives a postcard, lost in the mail, she knows she has to see the last place her mother had been. With some unexpected accomplices, she journeys to the Great North to seek solace in the glow of the Northern Lights. A story of Maka navigating loss, love, and finding her way again, told through the eyes of the people who love her.
1. Blair

Hey hey friendos! Welcome to my submission for Reverb 2017, Beyond the Northern Lights :) My amazing partner, mystery-shrouded over on tumblr, made some beautiful art/poetry that fully inspired me to write this. She is a gem of a person and I've been so lucky to work with her!

Much love also to my beta crew, who have kept me afloat during this whole process: Aquabella888, guacamoletrash, makapedia, professormaka and skadventuretime.

Full disclosure: because I am eternal SoMa trash, this story has some big ole Soul/Maka undertones. Also some TsuStar, if you squint. ;)

This has been such a labor of love. I hope you enjoy the story that took my heart and threw it into the sky.

* * *

There's a postcard in the mailbox.

It sits there, innocently placed on a throne of credit card offers and pizza pamphlets. It is silent, inoffensive. It asks for nothing but a pair of eyes; for the reader to turn it over, to access its contents, to read the cursory greeting gracing its B-side.

Blair blinks at the paper on top of the pile, staring at the image on its surface. Waves of blue, pink and green stretch across a snowy wonderland, threads of color weaving together against murky black skies.

It's come a long way to get here, she thinks. A lot farther than her roommate has come in the past two months.

The simple task of bringing up the mail now requires a level of finesse that Blair had not anticipated needing on a quiet Thursday evening. She's used to faking a smile at Chupa Cabra's, but this is a different circumstance with a vastly different audience. She doesn't like tiptoeing, doesn't like keeping up that extra layer of false cheerfulness that she often peels away at home.

She eyes the card again and wishes Soul had asked her to go get milk instead.

It is strange how an act as normal as getting the mail is likely to send her apartment into a tailspin. But despite the plunging feeling in her stomach, she will be there. She might come and go as she likes, and might _perhaps_ occasionally forget to pay the water bill, but she knows when she's needed.

She hesitates for a moment before reaching out, strips of violet joining the mix as her nails move across the paper. She lifts the whole pile, talons splaying against the sides of the mailbox before she grasps the letters in her palm.

When she pulls them out, she sees a small red sticker on the side of the postcard that reads: _Delayed:_ _Lost._

The irony doesn't escape her. So much has been lost in the past few weeks. There is a brokenness that was just beginning to mend. The cogs in their lives were finally starting to turn again.

And now there's a postcard in the mailbox.

She shuts the box and ascends the stairs. The curvy tops of her shoes lean away from every step she makes towards the fallout.

She doesn't flip it over. She doesn't need to see what it says. Some things should stay between a mother and her daughter.

She creaks open the door and Soul is on the couch, picking his way through a bowl of spaghetti. He starts to point to the ready-made bowl in the kitchen before he looks up at her. When she puts down the pile of mail with the postcard on top, she watches his eyes flare before something in them extinguishes.

She has seen this expression before, but she cannot remember where.

* * *

A successful mission, the final report had read. Blair knows this because Maka had left the folder on the coffee table for three days before Soul had cracked, telling her in the gentlest way possible that he'd put it in her drawer, somewhere she could keep it safe. In return, she hadn't spoken to him for a week.

It wasn't the first time Blair had "accidentally" read something she was not supposed to see. Blair has many skills, and she has her own ways of getting _inpurrmation_. Even after all of their years of schooling, her kittens have still not learned that leaving classified documents on the coffee table is a compromising choice. Cats are masters of gravity, after all. It's simply not good sense to put _anything_ on the edge of a table, not when all of her instincts oblige her to send folders of Very Secret information careening to their Very-No-Longer-Secret doom.

Normally, she laps up de-briefings like saucers of milk: self-indulgently, and with zero regrets. A true mama cat is nothing without her intel.

This time, she'd done it out of necessity rather than curiosity. She'd come home to find one kitten sobbing in her room, and the other hiding in the kitchen, his eyes unfocused on a burning pot of curry, and she'd needed to know why.

Yes, a successful mission. The rest of the report was equally callous: Evil properly vanquished, but with a casualty. A consequence. An unfortunate, saddening, but ultimately normal _part of the job_.

The obituary was not markedly different: a short paragraph in the paper celebrating her accomplishments. A woman who lived for her work. A hero. Always on a new adventure, a new path to conquer the wicked.

Blair knew that was the Academy's job, to keep a record of these things, but it was so disconnected. This cold, professional portrait was such a contrast to Blair's perception of Mama Albarn.

Perhaps they should have asked her daughter.

Blair hadn't known her, but somehow, she feels like she did. Here in the apartment, her presence had always been undeniable. She lived in the collection of colorful postcards lining Maka's wall, hung precariously on strings. She sent photos of things she loved: snowmen, sunsets, and things she knew Maka loved: flowers, fireworks, fancy gloves. She lived in the handwritten notes that came with packages filled to the brim with books. Maka had kept them all, and they reside in her lowest desk drawer. Blair knows _this_ because that is also where the winter scarves are, and she will nap in cashmere-padded luxury or not at all.

More than that, she lived in the little bursts of joy that appeared in Maka's eyes when the packages came. Maka's adoration for her mother was evergreen; a never-ending stream of affection that never stopped, even if other people didn't understand.

Blair cannot protect her from everything, nor does she want to. She doesn't need or want to be protected, and never has. It is Maka's unlikely combination of strength and kindness that Blair admires most of all.

Even so, Blair sees that this is a battle that Maka doesn't know how to fight. Maka's got no shortage of courage, and it's a weakness to which she has always been a little bit blind. Leaning on others is not so easy when you make a habit of keeping your quills out. Soul's always been the prickly one, but Maka's got thorns of her own, and constantly keeping her defenses up is a drain on all of the energy reserves she has been subsisting on. It has never been a daily task for her, fighting a battle that seethes under her skin.

That, too, had always been Soul's job.

He's been a skittish boy these days. Always hiding, or wringing his hands as he stares at the piano in the living room, willing himself to play something, _anything_ that will soothe instead of strain the tension in the apartment. He spends more time looking out of the corners of his eyes than usual, weapon instincts forever ingrained, and Blair can see him toeing the edges of the bubble Maka has placed herself in, not wanting to overstep his bounds.

Instead, for the past few weeks, his support has come in ghostly forms. A spontaneous mug of tea at Maka's bedroom door late in the night, since they both aren't sleeping. Dinner on the table at six. Blair also reaps the benefits of a timely meal, but she knows it's his way of trying to bring normalcy back into the apartment.

The past year has been hard on him. They're just out of the end of their studies and into the start of actual full-time Death Scythe/teaching duties, and he's still not used to enduring long days without her. He's never been one for words; as much as he craves the label of 'strong and silent', he is simply _scared_ , and now, the one person in which he normally seeks solace has no words of comfort for him. Closed doors have become a permanent fixture in the apartment, and he can't get through.

It had been three weeks before Maka had let Blair back into her room, warm lamplight spilling into the hallway as the smallest invitation, the only clue Maka will give that she's seeking company. Blair had nudged the door open to find her curled up on her pillow with red eyes, a book upside down on her bedside table, and Blair had slunk under the barrier her arms had formed across her chest, purring until they'd fallen asleep in the dim morning light, lamplight accentuating the darkness under Maka's eyes.

She doesn't know what is keeping Maka away from him. This wasn't what they'd agreed on, was it?

Ah. She remembers where she'd seen Soul's expression before.

It had been two years ago, at least. She had slipped into the apartment under cover of darkness, intending not to wake them, and had instead heard whispers spilling in an agitated stream from Soul's bedroom. She is a cat, and therefore _curious_ , so intrigue had pulled her through the apartment as padded paws made their way down the hallway, tail swishing as a single yellow eye peered around the doorframe.

" _You're_ not allowed to be mad," Soul was hissing as he wrapped a roll of gauze around Maka's ankle. "You're the one who decided to change the plan at the last second and not tell me. You can't do that stuff if I can't keep up. You could have _died_."

Maka, who'd been lying propped up on a pillow, shot up and glared at him as she launched herself into what Blair affectionately called their _post-battle battle_. It had become a fairly infrequent occurrence, but when the stars aligned and it did happen, it was, in its own way, even more exhausting than the actual fight.

"We can always die!" she hissed back, and Soul's hand stilled on her foot as he stared at the ceiling, as if welcoming the abyss to come and swallow him up instead of having this conversation. "You can't just throw yourself in front of me every time something goes wrong. I know how you feel about this, but we're supposed to be protecting _each other_. No matter what delusions you're always telling yourself about being The Weapon, Ultimate Cool-Guy Dispensable Shield."

Her finger quotes that accompanied "The Weapon" earned a groan out of Soul, but otherwise, he didn't lose his cool.

"That's what weapons are _for_ , Maka," he'd said, still staring at the ceiling, stoic as a fortress, but Blair could see cracks seeping through the mask, irritation trickling through. "I'm not apologizing for doing my job."

It was a conversation they'd had many times and couldn't seem to make headway on. Both of their walls were up; the two of them stone towers, locked in a standoff. Blair wondered which of them would give first until suddenly, she watched as Soul lowered his eyes to look at Maka and stiffened. She watched him hesitate for a moment before crawling up to her, crossing his legs awkwardly as he looked up at her through his hair.

"Hey," he said. "What is it?" There was a gentleness in his voice that he reserved only for these rare moments of late-night intimacy, and Blair, for the first time, was graced by the irksome notion that she shouldn't be spying. Luckily, her desire to get _the scoop_ was stronger than any sort of moral compass she possessed, so this only plagued her for a moment, and she remained glued to the doorframe.

He reached out for her hand and she threaded their fingers together. "I'm fine," she said, a sniffle escaping her, and despite the concern in his eyes, he smiled.

"Uh huh," he replied, and waited for the real answer, a slow thumb tracing circles on hers.

Soul is no stranger to waiting. This is another thing that Blair knows. He'd wait for her forever if she asked him to.

"It's just… been a while," she said, face falling as she picked at the comforter.

"Since what?"

"Since… it's been that close."

He realized what she meant, and the smile faltered. "...Yeah, it has," he admitted.

Maka looked up at him and Blair watched as fissures appeared in her façade, walls crumbling as she let the barriers break and teetered into her partner's arms.

He was not as awkward and unsure as he'd been in his early teens, but he was still bewildered, and didn't really know what to do when she buried her face in his neck. They sat there like that for a minute, another sniffle sneaking out from beneath his now-damp shoulder.

"You've gotta live, okay?" she whispered, face still pressed against cotton, and there it was, that expression on his face, a flare of something hiding, something bright and _alive_ that extinguished itself before anything could fan the flames.

Blair definitely felt like she shouldn't be spying now, so she did what any sensible cat would do and stayed exactly where she was.

" _That's_ your job," Maka said. "Dying isn't part of it. You aren't allowed to do it."

"...Okay," was all he eventually said, even though that _was_ part of this life they'd chosen, the contract they'd signed, and everyone in the room was painfully aware that they would face death many more times that _week_ , let alone in their lifetime.

"In that case," he added, lowering his chin onto the part in her pigtails, " _Your_ job-" He hesitated, weighing the impact of his words. "...is to let people look out for you." Her breath hitched a little, and there was a tremor in her fingers as she gripped his hand more tightly. "You don't have to do it on your own. You can be strong and still lean on the people who lo-... uh, w-who care about you."

After a moment, Maka took a deep breath. "I… can do that," she said, and a hint of a smile graced her voice.

"Yeah?" he asked, and the moment he started to smile again was also the moment he happened to see Blair. His eyes narrowed in what was indisputably a nonverbal _shoo_ , and Blair decided it was time to take her leave, tail swishing loftily as she pranced away.

She'd seen and heard enough to know what was really going on, anyway.

* * *

There is a moment, before something happens, where everything slows down. Where the sadness, the fear, the anticipation are prolonged, poignantly stretched. In this moment, as it unfolds before her, Blair finds herself wanting to jump up, snatch the postcard and run away to keep them safe from the pain.

And yet, even though everything slows down, it happens too quickly for her.

Soul is still staring wide-eyed at the card, sinking back into that sea of helplessness that has become his home, when Maka walks out of the room and sees what is sitting on top of the pile.

Heartbreak is quiet, Blair thinks. It is not always screams and sobs and turbulence, especially not for Maka. Sometimes, heartbreak is the sound of three footsteps crossing the floor, fingers brushing against paper, and a carefully cultivated veneer of _I am okay_ that crumbles into dust. Tears are building in her eyes, and when they spill over, they leave trails that leak with uncertainty. The same ones that she's been walking since the day the report had come in.

They both pride themselves on being _strong_ , armed in granite, safe in the towers they've constructed for themselves. A stone wall is a brilliant display of strength - until the day it cracks.

Pieces of her are scattering across the floor, and Soul can't pick them up on his own.

Maka stares at the letter for a moment more, and then turns and walks, robotically, back into her bedroom, leaving Soul and Blair sitting in the living room, facing another closed door.

As it turns out, cat _ears_ aren't too shabby, either, and when Maka shuts the door to her room, a sequence of events presents itself to Blair in a sort of oratory screenplay.

Through the door comes exactly one muffled sob, followed by a silence that stretches through the apartment, through the nervous twitch of Soul's fingers on his shoe. After a minute or so, the silence is broken by frantic tapping on laptop keys, and Soul and Blair exchange a look that is one part knowing and two parts _why is she like this._

She's a windstorm in summer; predictable enough to follow but too chaotic to catch, and when the frantic tapping evolves into frantic rummaging, Soul looks at the door, then back at Blair, then back at the door.

"She's packing, isn't she?" he mutters, and because Blair is 1) great at keeping secrets and 2) a filthy, _filthy_ enabler, she winds around his legs and says, "why don't you find out for yourself, scythe-boy?"

He ignores her tone, but still walks up to the door. Holds his hand up to knock, then seems to think better of it and walks to his room instead. Two sets of rummaging commence, and as Blair realizes what is happening, the potential of what is about to unfold, she hops up onto the couch and furtively licks at a paw.

In addition to Blair's other skills, she is a master-class meddler, and like most meddlers, she is thrilled when the meddling happens on its own, without her express effort. She uses the energy she has saved to clean extra thoroughly between her toes.

When Maka emerges, she's wearing staunch resolution like a badge, streaks of fractal night sky still peeking between her fingers as she dumps a gigantic green backpack on the couch. She places a stack of papers on the table, and as she moves to the hall closet to rummage some more, Soul comes out with a small suitcase. When he sees what Maka has packed, he curses under his breath and trudges back into his room.

Ten more minutes of mutual rummaging and finally, he emerges with his backpack just as Maka is tying the drawstring on hers.

When Maka turns to look at him, she tenses, ready for a fight, and then goes still when she sees the bag on his back. Blair watches them size each other up. They haven't been on the same plane of existence in so long that seeing them on the same page is a rewarding sight.

Soul tugs the backpack off of his shoulder and sets it on the couch next to hers. It is both a silent commitment and a silent _I dare you to say no_ , and a solid ten seconds of intra-planar eye contact elapse before Maka turns away, resignation reading in the set of her shoulders, the listless look of her eyes.

"I've gotta go," she says, because that is the extent of the explanation she has prepared, and because maybe she needs to say it, even if he already knows.

"I know," he affirms from behind her.

She looks down at the floor, and the quiet determination that has always fueled her soul begins to radiate through the room. "I have to see where… where she was."

He nods. "Just let me know when we leave," he says, and he sits himself down on the couch, affecting boredom, scratching behind Blair's ears. Maka watches him for a moment with a bemused expression, but says nothing. When she finally breaks eye contact and walks into the kitchen, his eyes follow.

"Where're we going, anyway?" Soul mutters after a moment. Blair looks at the papers, precariously placed on the side of the table, and because she is not one to neglect the skills that nature has given her, she slinks off of the couch and sends the papers into flight with an agile paw.

Las Vegas to Stockholm, the itinerary reads. And then northwards.

The next two days are a whirlwind of preparations, but through it all, two backpacks sit side by side on the couch, patiently awaiting their departure.

In a blink, the door is opening with strange finality, and Blair watches them gather their things and prepare to step into a different sort of mission than the ones they are used to. To seek solace, and a little peace, and answers that she doesn't know if they will find.

To recover things that have been lost.

Bu-tan spends a lot of time in the business of infatuation. Her skills in that department are perhaps her strongest. It's not about love: she knows how hearts work, how they are flexible and easily molded in the right hands. A soft putty that she can manipulate to make things easier for awhile. She is confronted daily with infatuation. She makes games out of being adoring and adored, and she wins them all.

She watches Soul's face as he picks up his backpack and then gently straightens the straps on Maka's, tugging a pigtail out from underneath one of the straps.

Bu-tan still knows what love looks like.


	2. Spirit

Spirit is waiting.

It is something he has done for much of his life. He waited, many moons ago, for a fiery, beautiful blonde to see through him, to pull him into her arms and call him out on his longing. He waited for his baby girl to grow up, to grasp her dreams by the collar, to silence every critic that tried to stop her. To do everything she was destined to do, and without any of his help.

Now, he waits for her to smile again.

On a less... existential level, he waits outside of Maka and Soul's apartment, gas tank filled to the brim as he prepares to fulfill his duty as Trusty On-Call Airport Chauffeur.

He remembers a time when he might have been excited about this. He imagines a former version of himself pointing his thumb at his chest with a roguish wink, muttering something like "Papa's got you, Maka! Papa and his trusty four-door death machine will keep you safe!" as he slides across the hood of the car, miscalculates, and topples into the street.

He can no longer find that person when he looks in the mirror.

It has been two months. But it's been so much _longer_ than two months. It's been ten years now of atoning for his mistakes, of praying that the love he tries to show his daughter will finally transform into something she can accept.

He is down to his barest bones, all out of gimmicks and flashy declarations. He has to do the thing he'd never done before: the thing Maka least expects from him. He has to _be there_. He can no longer sneak away when he gets spooked and come back the next day, lipstick on his collar and his tail between his legs.

But it's hard to be strong. Of the three of them, he's the only one who was never brave.

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. The sunrise creeps over the tops of the buildings in the city, and he watches as dim purple hues awaken along the skyline. He tries not to let the dormant despair that lurks in the back of his brain overwhelm him.

As tough as it's been on Maka, his ex-wife's passing has been hard on him, too. Losing a partner is not easy, no matter the circumstance.

The night the news came in, he'd fallen asleep with her face branded into his eyelids. As he slept, shadows of sandy blonde hair etched themselves into a frame in his mind, backlit with little bursts of light; the ones that stick around when you've looked at something dazzlingly bright for too long.

Maka's reaction was everything he'd imagined it would be, but nothing like he'd hoped. No tear-filled phone call, no throwing her arms around him and sobbing together as their relationship magically mended before his eyes.

After hearing nothing for almost a day, he'd called her that night. She was civil, emotionless, perfectly calm. Terrifyingly so.

He digs in, holds on tighter. He calls her every night. He won't let her push him away.

That's the one thing that has changed: their nightly conversations. They've become routine. They are short, and sometimes forced, but they are the anchor that holds his days together. He is always the one who instigates them, but he cannot bring himself to be bitter.

Because he can hear the subtle break in her voice when she says, " _Bye, Papa_ ," right before the line goes dead. He wonders if she can read the sadness that lies behind every goodnight text he sends her afterwards.

She won't cry in front of him, and he _can't_ cry in front of her. He will not blubber over this, will not ruin the strong, impenetrable front that he has constructed for himself, that he knows she can see through but that he won't abandon.

Three weeks in, he realizes in the middle of the night that Maka is the only family that he has left. The next morning, he smudges out the tear stains on his pillowcase with his wrist.

He thinks that they both might be a little bit broken.

He will never grow too old to hope. He's made mistakes, so _many_ mistakes, and he's greedy and undeserving. There is no one to blame but himself for all that has happened, but he tries. With every fiber of his being, he will try to be a worthy father to such an extraordinary daughter.

A sound startles him and he looks to his right to see a gloved hand pulling open the door to the sedan. Maka shoots him a glance that says _don't intervene_ before she slides into the front seat. She shuts her door with an impatient snap and the back door opens instead.

"You could've told me anytime," Soul mutters as he slides into the backseat and slams the door shut. "Literally any time, other than when we're _walking out the door_. We should've taken the bike, we don't need… anyone's help to get to the airport."

Spirit's eyes narrow in the rear view, and he's about to open his mouth to say something before Maka jumps in.

"Well, sorry," she snaps, sounding as not-sorry as any one person could be. " _You're welcome_ for saving you twenty bucks on parking, by the way."

The withering look she turns around and gives Soul effectively shuts him up. He stews in the back, deciding to glare at the ceiling instead of at Maka because he values his life and - based on the quick glance he throws at Spirit - he knows he is already on one Albarn's hit list for the day.

Despite his annoyance, Spirit has to try to keep a smile from creeping across his face; not only because watching his daughter deliver a sass-beating to anyone that isn't him is one of his favorite pastimes, but also because it dawns on him that _they're fighting._

He hasn't seen them bicker in so long. It feels natural in a way he'd been missing, and the familiarity is comforting.

"It's... okay," Soul finally relents, and Spirit feels his irritation ease a little more as a pang of almost-sympathy hits him.

Despite the fact that he publicly announces his disdain for Soul at every opportunity, Spirit has also realized that he's been getting soft. As much as he'd waited - hoped - for him to slip up over the years, Soul's loyalty is as unwavering as ever, and as time has gone on, Spirit actually finds himself subconsciously relying on Soul, trusting his judgement and understanding more and more when it comes to Maka.

It is a deeply unpleasant notion that he enthusiastically avoids whenever possible.

To his right, Spirit watches Maka deflate again, eyes fixing on the road ahead, and he is reminded of how far they still have to go.

"Got everything?" Spirit asks, more as a formality than anything, because, quite frankly, he can't remember the last time Maka had forgotten _anything_. She nods, not looking at him.

Yes, she never forgot anything. A sharp-as-a-whip memory has served her well on exams and for typical meisterly duties, but she's also got a black belt in the art of grudge-holding, and as he puts the car into drive, Spirit wonders again if he will ever make it back into her good graces.

When things get better, he'll stand outside her window and send her fire-fueled mojo for the rest of his life, if that's what it takes.

The drive is silent, so he ruminates. For the past two months, her mother's absence has led his mind down so many twisty-turny paths into the past, to times when he was well-behaved and well-adored, when he would slip her chocolates after supper while Mama's back was turned.

He thinks back to desert summers gone by, to trekking through the scorching heat in search of a marigold patch. Sunday family outings had always been Maka's favorite, her energy seemingly boundless in the heat as she laughed from her perch atop Spirit's back, tiny pigtails poking out under a white floppy hat. Mama always opted to carry the bags while Maka moved periodically from Spirit's arms to back to shoulders, chattering happily about the new names of the plants Mama had taught her about on their previous outing.

"Do you know why marigolds are the best flower, Papa?" she asked him on one particularly hot day. The heat was so strong that black mirages slithered across the sand, strips of darkness slipping into nothingness with every step they made across the desert.

"Why's that, sweetie?" he asked, looking up at her as she searched for her words, green eyes glistening with excitement.

"They're really strong!" she finally said, tiny hands taking to the skies as she gazed up at the clouds. "They can grow almost anywhere - without water, or good soil, or any of that! The only thing they don't like is the cold."

"Oh yeah?" Spirit asked.

"I… think so." Maka stopped, suddenly gripped with hesitation. "Right, Mama?" she called out.

They both looked ahead and were met with an expanse of desert stretching before them, Mama too far in the distance to hear.

He didn't have to look up to sense Maka's disappointment. Even at seven years old, she was well-accustomed to being left behind.

When they finally found marigolds, though, they dug them up, made bouquets, and took them home, bringing a little sliver of resilient desert into the house with them. Maka took full responsibility for keeping them fed, watered and beautiful, almost maternal in the way she hovered over them, helping them flourish for as long as they could.

They made it to the marigold patch for a few years afterward, but the distance they'd felt that day in the desert melted into their daily lives, subtle darkness seeping into the bright moments, into the early mornings when Mama rushed out the door without a kiss goodbye, leaving Maka sniffling over her Cheerios.

Slowly, the sweet father-daughter chocolate sneaking of their early years morphed into _him_ sneaking away from it all, into the embrace of women who didn't push him away. He found himself seeking his own mirages, ones that didn't involve broken promises and wives who put themselves before their daughters.

Spirit knows she had loved Maka. She had gotten better, over the years; sending Maka more postcards, even packages. She'd gotten to know her better, reestablished the link they'd been missing. They rarely talked about it, but he could read it on Maka's face when a package came. She'd never lost that dewy-eyed adoration for her mother, the same adoration that she used to share with him, too.

He appreciates the effort, and knows how much joy it brought Maka, but he finds his ex-wife's attitude during Maka's youth so hard to forgive. There were so many things to do and adventures to be had, she'd say, and they were so _young,_ and didn't he want _more_ out of this life?

And of course he wanted. Wanting was, ultimately, the nail in the coffin, wasn't it? The thing that sent the woman he'd loved packing, her long-conceived escape plan finally validated. The thing that had set his daughter against him.

He has to remember not to shovel the blame elsewhere. Callous as her mother had been, he was no better. Being the only _present parent_ wins him no awards, has never been enough to earn back the love of the only person whose love matters to him. He's been selfish, so _selfish_ , and he doesn't deserve an ounce of forgiveness.

But he loves her so _much_ , so much that he can feel new tears rip into the fabric of his heart on the more painful nights when he thinks of what she means to him, how he's failed her. His ceiling keeps him company, and he watches the flecks in the paint as he thinks of every misstep he's ever made in their relationship. He tries to keep the stuffing in his heart from leaking out at the seams. Even with all the blunders and bad memories, he is bitterly grateful that this is one part of him that Stein cannot stitch back together.

And in the meantime, he waits. He'd wait for her forever if she asked him to.

"Papa?" Maka says next to him, snapping him back into the present. He blinks frantically against the blur that had been gathering behind his eyes.

"What is it, baby girl?" he asks, trying not to sound as tired as he feels.

"...Thanks for the ride," she says. As the car pulls up to the gate, he shoots her a watery smile. She very feebly returns it, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

He doesn't know what to say as they get out of the car and start to gather their things, so he jumps out of the car and helps her get her backpack on.

"I know it might not be easy," he hedges as she turns around to face him. "But… call if you can?"

She looks up at him, pigtails blowing slightly in the dry Nevada wind. She's grown so much, but right now, all of a sudden, she looks very small. It makes him want to pick her up on his shoulders and carry her through the desert again.

Instead, she's headed to the cold. The only place where marigolds don't grow.

"I can't promise," she says, eyes trained on the airport doors. "But I can try. Maybe."

Soul's eyes fix on her for a moment and then he looks at Spirit. Spirit can't tell what he's trying to say, but the little nod Soul gives him makes him feel a little glad that she won't be alone out there.

… And she _certainly_ won't be alone, he realizes with a jolt as two very familiar faces appear at the same doors Maka had just been staring at, dragging suitcases behind them.

"Heeeeeeey, Maka! What a _coincidence_!" Black*Star's unmistakable voice booms from the doorway, accompanied by a sheepish wave from Tsubaki from beside him. Spirit watches as Soul's eyes fix back onto the sky, mentally preparing himself as Maka's narrowed eyes slide in his direction.

"What. Are. They. Doing. Here," she grits out, and Spirit knows, in that moment, that Soul's feigned innocence will not save him. When each one of Maka's words becomes its own sentence, Spirit knows it's time to plan his escape route, and he jumps back into the car.

Comforted by the fact that she's in good hands, he leans out the car window and says, "See you soon, sweetheart!" Surprisingly, she does turn to him and give him a small wave, though the irritation on her face is still immutable.

Behind her, the three of them are waving at him too, and unbidden, his watery smile returns. It hits him that even with a pair of highly imperfect parents, Maka has managed to build her own little family.

On the way home, he thinks back on Maka's fascination with marigolds: how they are tenacious, determined to grow. To flourish where they're planted, despite what the world throws their way.

He decides that marigolds are tougher than they're given credit for, and he thinks that maybe, with the right conditions and the right amount of love, they just might survive the cold.


	3. Tsubaki

Tsubaki is, at her core, a peacemaker. A gentle presence in the chaos, a soft smile in the shadows. She is kindness incarnate, empathy's mistress, and she does whatever she can to right others' wrongs on any given day.

Given the company she keeps, however, peacemaking is sometimes a taller order than she anticipates.

As Spirit's car drives away, Maka turns around again, and Tsubaki prepares to fully accept her peacemaking duties when she sees Maka's expression, eyes fixed like lasers on Soul's still-very-guilty face.

"What's going on here?" Maka asks again, ignoring both Tsubaki and Black*Star, which isn't altogether unexpected. Nonetheless, Tsubaki is ready to jump in.

"We heard that you two were going on a little trip, and figured it might be a good time-"

"From _who_?" Maka says, laser-focus maintained as the object of her gaze continues to shuffle uncomfortably.

"From Soul, _obviously_ ," Black*Star says, finger extending toward what was indeed obvious, especially since Soul is currently doing his best example of Textbook Guilty Conscience. It takes all of the muscles in Tsubaki's forehead to keep from wincing at both of them.

"What Black*Star means is-" Tsubaki begins.

"What he means is, someone doesn't know how to _keep personal things to himself_ ," Maka says, cutting her off, and she takes off toward the terminal doors without a second glance, backpack bouncing agitatedly on her shoulders as she stalks away.

Soul's eyes descend quickly from the sky, only to fix on the ground instead. He visibly crumples a little.

"Duuude, she'll come around," Black*Star says, awkwardly reaching out and punching Soul on the shoulder - even Black*Star can't miss the disappointment radiating off of him.

Soul picks up his backpack and hoists it over his shoulder. "It's whatever," he says. Tsubaki takes a moment to appreciate that in the entire time she has known him, every single time Soul has said that phrase, it has never, not once, been _whatever._ Even so, he ambles off after Maka before anyone can say anything else.

Tsubaki and Black*Star exchange a glance, and follow him through the doors.

Maka doesn't say anything as they get their tickets, but all of her movements are accompanied by some physical manifestation of her irritation: a sigh, a stomp, a scoff. By the time they get through security, she seems to be slowly coming to terms with her fate, turning and acknowledging them for the first time as they all scramble to put their shoes back on.

Unfortunately, acknowledgement seems to be the extent of her kindness at the moment.

The airport is hectic, and their morning continues as one would expect: Black*Star declaring at the top of his lungs that he knows how to get to the gate. Maka insisting that it's the other direction. Soul walking over to the nearest wall and standing against it until someone makes a choice. Maka dragging Tsubaki to the nearest departure screen to _actually_ figure out which direction they should be going.

Between Soul and Maka's reciprocal surliness and Black*Star's exuberance, the waiting area at the gate feels like an emotional oasis. The faint, quiet energy of people passing through the terminal is a welcome alternative to the sea of bickering and passive-aggressive glares that had permeated Tsubaki's morning. Despite her best efforts to keep everyone from lunging at each other's throats, there isn't much she can do, especially when Soul and Maka are in this state.

She looks up from the scarf she's knitting to check on the group. She locates Black*Star first, who is still standing by the window, trying to grab onto the ledge so that he can multitask his way through doing pullups and watching the planes. Soul is taking up three seats at the end of their row, headphones over his ears and radiating an aura of general displeasure, especially since he is still licking his wounds from this morning.

Maka is right beside Tsubaki on her other side, nose-deep in a book. She has evidently accepted Tsubaki back into her circle of friends, which is good news, but by choosing this seat, she has effectively placed two barriers between herself and Soul. Tsubaki pretends not to notice. However, she hypothesizes that all is not lost. She leans down for a minute to grab something from her bag in order to give Maka a chance to throw a glance at Soul - which she does - and then sits back up, hiding a smile. It is then that she glances at Maka's book again and notices that she's been on the same page for ten minutes.

"What are you reading?" Tsubaki asks.

"Oh, uh-" Maka says instantly, looking up at her. "It's a book. About the Northern Lights." She flips it over so that Tsubaki can see. "I've just… I've always been really curious about them, but I never really had a chance to learn about them. And now…"

She trails off, and Tsubaki can see hints of tears starting to build behind her eyes. Tsubaki nods sagely, ignoring the tears because she knows Maka won't want them acknowledged.

"I've never seen them before," Tsubaki says, looking straight ahead while Maka wipes her face on her sleeve. "I don't think Black*Star has, either."

"Neither have… we," Maka says with another discreet glance in Soul's direction. "They're supposed to be really beautiful."

"Thanks for giving us the chance to see them," Tsubaki says with a soft smile as she goes back to her knitting. Maka scowls a little at this, but some of her ire has definitely subsided.

"I just…" she sighs. "He should've warned me. He should've told me he was planning on inviting you guys."

Tsubaki looks up at Maka then, amusement and surprise coloring her face in equal parts. "You think he invited us?"

Maka blanches, eyebrows furrowing.

"I mean, I assume he… he would've… you mean he _didn't_ invite you?" she says. She slips her bookmark back in and closes the cover of the book, pulling her legs up onto the seat and turning to face Tsubaki.

"Well," Tsubaki says thoughtfully, not looking at Maka, choosing her words carefully. "Kid… mentioned you were taking some time off, and we both may have… _encouraged_ Soul to spill the beans, a little."

Maka stares at her, dark circles under her eyes pronounced by the slowly dawning realization in her expression. She leans over the armrest and leans in to Tsubaki conspiratorially.

"The other night, when he came home late and wasn't hungry," Maka says, watching Tsubaki's face. "...Green curry?"

"Red curry," Tsubaki counters with a little shrug, and Maka looks like she's very close to solving a mystery as she gazes back at her. "With the bamboo shoots," Tsubaki adds, and Maka nods, because they are his favorite, and in the arsenal of Things That Make Soul Talk, they are at the top of the list.

"And Black*Star?" Maka asks.

"He… works a little differently," Tsubaki says, a little abashed now.

They both turn to look at Soul again who, coincidentally, is fiddling with his headphones, trying to massage the very specific spot on top of the head where one frequently administers a noogie.

Maka sighs behind her, all suspicions confirmed, and Tsubaki turns to see her slump down in her chair.

"I'm sorry if we overstepped," Tsubaki says, watching Maka's face from its little cocoon inside her sweatshirt hoodie. "We just thought… maybe, if you didn't want to do this all alone, we could look out for you."

Maka's eyes widen, and she straightens a little, as if something has picked her back up again.

"Yeah," she says, still staring forward, and Tsubaki can see the cogs in her brain turning. She doesn't say anything else for a few minutes, and Tsubaki goes back to her scarf.

"Hey Tsu?" Maka finally says. "Do you know how to knit gloves?"

Tsubaki nods. "Want me to make some for you?"

"Yeah, that'd be really -" She stops. "Oh. Oh no," she says, eyes widening as she looks behind Tsubaki again. "Black*Star, what are you-"

Tsubaki whips around and is greeted with the sight of Black*Star jumping on the desk, grasping the microphone, and shouting, "Heyyyy everybody! Who's ready for a great flight to Stockholm! You're in for a treat, since the Great Black*Star is on board with-"

As peacemaker, Tsubaki's duties often consist of one job: keep tabs on Black*Star. In her one job, there is one cardinal rule: when it gets too quiet, Black*Star is up to something.

At least he's done wonders for their reaction time.

Tsubaki and Maka both burst out of their seats and into action, Maka wrangling Black*Star off of the desk via chokehold and Tsubaki grabbing the microphone out of his hand. Airline staff appear like moles popping out of their mounds and Tsubaki puts on her most placating expression, attempting to smooth things over.

In the background, Black*Star cackles and starts doing one-handed pushups on a row of chairs as Maka towers over him, making use of her favorite corrective behavior technique: the Unceasing Lecture. Soul surveys all of this through his headphone filter, probably deciding that involving himself isn't worth the trouble. Finally, Tsubaki's charms seem to work on the gate attendants, and they manage not to get thrown off the flight.

On the plane, Tsubaki takes the time to enjoy the silence.

She is used to being the peacemaker. She does her best, anyway. She has clearly not yet mastered the art of corralling Black*Star - which, she thinks with a faint smile, is part of his charm, despite everything. But there's another element to peacemaking that she is still learning to navigate.

It is easier, she has discovered, to help make peace _between_ people than it is to help them make peace with themselves.

It's a path that she's slowly learning to tread herself, but she doesn't quite know how to bring others along. And some days she thinks that's for the best, as her own path is riddled with its own darkness, its own whispered uncertainties that others shouldn't have to endure.

Tsubaki is no stranger to loss, after all.

It's one reason why she's also struggled, watching Maka navigate the pain. Some days it's like she's reliving everything, drudging up all of the muddied memories that she had buried and left abandoned.

There's a part of her that yearns for solace, too, that she can't seem to fully realize for herself.

But there's nothing, she thinks with another glance at Black*Star, that a good partner can't help you handle.

She looks over at them both, Soul sinking into his seat with his legs out straight, arms hanging over the armrests, and Maka curled in on herself, leaning away from him, arms iron-clad around her knees. Two inches separate them, but there is more than physical space that they need to reconcile.

She thinks back to when she and Maka had first come to the Academy, to the small, impressionable preteens they used to be, wide-eyed and open to all that this life had to offer them. She remembers her, then: Maka with her stout confidence, surety in all that she did. Model student, model friend. Tsubaki had looked up to her so much - and still does, in so many ways. Admired the strength she possessed, the no-second-guessing, take-no-prisoners attitude that she carried with her like a charm.

And then, it so happened, she'd ended up with the _other_ most headstrong person that the Academy had managed to produce that year, who shares many of the qualities that Maka has, though they both have their own battles to fight.

Maka and Black*Star's friendship makes more sense to Tsubaki than it does to most, perhaps because in both of their cases, people never tend to get close enough. Maka had always been guarded; despite her warmth and seemingly natural instinct for making friends, she is choosy about the people she lets in.

Black*Star, with his propensity to push people away - or rather, send them running away screaming - is not markedly different. Despite his demeanor, she knows he has other reasons for keeping people out, and Tsubaki wonders if that's why, despite their frequent misunderstandings, he and Maka's friendship has endured for so long.

She looks out the window over snowy mountains, tiny rivers snaking their way through the rifts in the rock, and thinks of losing mothers, of losing brothers, of the things that were more important, more attractive than being there for their families.

For the rest of the flight, she thinks of the people they've left behind. The kids who've had to learn to fend for themselves.

They've all lost something, or someone, and that loss is part of them. Inescapably so. But she knows, and she hopes they know, that they've gained some pretty incredible people, too.

* * *

The plane arrives late, and they stumble into the airport with swollen eyes and sore legs after thirteen hours of nearly sleepless flight.

Maka leads them down to a kiosk near baggage claim where she has arranged for camping equipment and a shuttle. Heavy with sleep, the three of them follow her almost blindly into the shuttle, and all of them nap for the three-hour drive - except maybe Maka, Tsubaki realizes. Every time she stirs, she sees Maka grimly staring out the window, determination set into her face. Once, Tsubaki watches as she draws a tiny snowman on the window and wipes it away, moisture clinging to the tips of her fingers as she rubs them over her eyes.

The campsite is completely covered in snow when they arrive, cold piercing their faces as they set up their tents.

"This is… where we're sleeping?" Soul tries to say politely, but as usual, it comes out sounding more like griping. It sets off a chain reaction of irritableness that infects them all and continues throughout the evening, and by the time the two tents are set up and they are inside, the tension between the two of them is palpable.

Maka still volunteers to stay in the tent with Soul, which is surprising, but once they get inside the tent, Tsubaki's relief vanishes. She tries not to listen, but the tent fabric is thin and their nerves are thinner, run down from jet lag and months of misunderstandings.

"We could've stayed _one_ night in a hotel," Soul is muttering. "It's cold and my toes are freezing and- hey, wh-" There is an unzipping sound and a whirring socks-on-sleeping-bag sound, followed by silence.

" _What are you doing?_ "

"Sitting on your feet," Maka says matter-of-factly. "So that you stop _whining_."

A series of scuffling erupts - likely Soul trying to slide his feet around - but it quickly ceases, and Tsubaki can imagine the death glares they are sending at each other.

"You don't have to be here in the first place," Maka hisses, all vindictiveness. "If you don't like it, you can just go home. I didn't ask you to come."

"Yeah, right," he spits. "Let me just flag down a taxi in the middle-of-bumfuck-nowhere Sweden. I'm sorry _you_ don't like it, but you're stuck with me."

"Yeah, and I'm stuck with _those two_ also, thanks to you," she says. Tsubaki can imagine her pointing at their tent.

Soul is right about one thing: it _is_ cold out here, and Tsubaki tucks herself in against Black*Star, who is already very asleep, limbs sprawled out everywhere. She doesn't feel like spectating one of their duels without permission, but noise - and curiosity - keep her awake.

There is another long silence, followed by a loud sigh. There is no shuffling, so Soul's feet are likely still captive.

"I could've come on my own, you know," she says, irritation evaporating slightly. "I would've been fine."

"You can do anything on your own," Soul agrees, and the defensiveness drops out of his voice, too. "... But you don't have to."

After a moment, there is a small shuffle that indicates that the feet have been freed, followed by a zipping noise where Maka crawls, probably, back into her sleeping bag.

"Tempted by red curry," Maka says quietly, and Tsubaki can almost hear her shaking her head in disappointment.

"... She put in bamboo shoots," Soul mumbles, resigned.

"So I've heard," Maka says, though there's the tiniest hint of a smile in her voice now, and it is comforting. "I'm…" she begins, and then falters.

"... What's up?" he says, and Tsubaki can suddenly hear it in his voice, as she's sure Maka can: the realization that she's actually talking to him, confiding in him. He's _elated_ , but he can't be too eager, lest he send her back into the hole she's tentatively climbing out of.

"I'm not so mad that they're here anymore," she finally says. "I'm... not that mad that you're here, either," she adds. "I guess."

Silence falls one final time, and Tsubaki smiles into the night, letting sleep settle into her eyelids.

There's one last thing she almost-hears, muddied in her brain against the cold and the sweetness of beckoning slumber.

"As if I'd be anywhere else," he says into the darkness. "Nerd."


	4. Black Star

It is early. On the outskirts of the woods, the finches are starting to rouse in the trees, bringing life to the snowy world below. The sun peeks over the horizon, filling the tent with a muted, ethereal glow that builds along with the birdsong. Most of the world lies in peaceful sleep, tucked into their beds, content to rest a few hours more.

Black*Star decides that it's the perfect time to build a snowman.

He rolls out of his sleeping bag, careful to pull Tsubaki's sleeping bag back up to her chin when it pulls sideways. After making sure she is adequately tucked in, he slides the zipper down on the tent and throws himself soundlessly through the opening, blinking against the brightness of the snow.

He scans the area for optimal construction zones. It isn't hard to pick a spot, since the entire space in front of him is a sea of white. He decides on a place right in front of Soul and Maka's tent, to be sure they won't miss the stunning creation he's about to concoct.

After congratulating himself on a spot well chosen, he gets to work.

Within 15 minutes, he's built pretty big bottom and middle sections for his masterpiece. He doesn't do anything halfway. He doesn't have Kid's meticulousness, but what he lacks in detail-orientedness he makes up for in really really large, if misshapen, snowballs.

Just as he's trying to haul the second tier on top of the first, a zipping sound comes from Soul and Maka's tent. As he turns, he watches as Maka emerges, turns around, and freezes.

"You're… building a snowman," she says flatly.

"Yeah!" Black*Star says, arms stretched out towards his creation. "I was hoping to have more done by the time you got out, buuuut…" He scratches his chin and then shrugs. "A god could always use a helper."

Maka stands there for a minute, looking a bit skeptical. Or conflicted, like she can't decide whether to be happy or sad. But eventually, she leans down and picks up a handful of snow, watching it in her hand as it trickles to the ground around the new glove that Tsubaki had given her the night before.

"Yeah, okay."

They work in silence, rolling snow, pushing it along the earth. A quick jaunt into the forest earns them some sticks and rocks, and a bunch of pine needles to serve as a crown. When they return, they toss in their stick-arms and admire their handywork.

"Wanna do the face?" Black*Star asks as they look up at the snowman, towering a good three feet over their heads.

"I can't reach," Maka says, extending her arms to hand him the rocks. "You'd better do it."

For some reason, he feels like this is something she actually really _wants_ to do, but won't say so, so he laughs and kneels down, patting his shoulder. "C'mon up," he says.

A tiny smile crosses her face, and she clambers onto his shoulders. Arms around her legs, he doesn't waver as she carefully positions each rock, concentration set into her face. There's one delicate moment where they topple a little as he reaches down to grab the pine needles, but after a moment of wobbliness, they make it back into the sky.

"This might take a minute, okay?" she says. "Tell me if you get tired."

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. "Yeah, okay Maka. I'll let you know."

She doesn't say anything, but she grins and grabs a handful of pine needles from the pile in the crook of her arm. She slowly pushes the needles into the snowman's head, on the top and down the sides until it's got a full head of pine needle hair. Their snowman slowly transforms into a gargantuan, sandy-blonde snow woman.

"...Kay," Maka says after several minutes, and he steps back and kneels down, letting her step off of his shoulders. When he stands up and looks at her, her face is streaked with tears.

"What are you crying for?" he demands, surprised. "It looks great! What's wrong with it?"

At this, a double-unzipping sound sends Soul and Tsubaki out of their respective tents with a flurry of questions. The most prominent is, of course, the usual one: "What did you do, Black*Star?"

"Okay, for once, I didn't _do_ -" he begins, before Maka starts waving her hands to silence them.

"No, it's great, Black*Star," she says, looking at all three of them and wiping her eyes. "It's… it's exactly what I wanted."

Soul and Tsubaki drop their anger and look up at the snow-woman.

Everything gets a little tense, suddenly, which makes perfect sense to Black*Star, since their snow-woman is pretty awe-inspiring indeed, and he is glad that her majesty is being given the respect she is due.

Nobody says anything for a moment, until Tsubaki walks over to Maka, puts an arm around her and says, "She's beautiful." Black*Star nods enthusiastically.

"And…" Tsubaki hesitates. "And just because she might not be alive doesn't mean she isn't beautiful, and strong, and brave. And you can still remember her as being all of those things, if you want. She'll always be that way, if that's how you want her to be."

Well, she's totally lost him at this point, but as he watches Maka nod softly and sniffle into Tsubaki's shoulder, he figures he'll let Tsubaki break the news that, in fact, no snowmen (or snow-women, for that matter) are alive. He hopes she doesn't take it too hard.

Even so. For some reason, once they pack up and leave, Black*Star gets the feeling that the snow-woman watches them go.

* * *

They've been hiking for hours, and his minions are probably starting to get tired because Maka calls out for them to stop and pulls out a map.

"Okay, chief," Black*Star says. "Where are we headed now?"

"So, we're here," Maka says, pointing at the map. "We came from Stockholm to here-" She points again. "In the shuttle. That helped us cut off about a day's worth of walking. We need to get here," she says, dragging her finger up to a small town just inside the bottom curve of Sweden's eastern border. "We have about 12 hours of walking left, so we should be able to get there by tomorrow night."

"That's a long way," Black*Star says. She nods.

"I don't wanna see the Lights at all until we get there," she says. "We can hike at night if we need to, but I won't look for them until we get there."

Black*Star knows that if anyone has the self-discipline to ignore the Lights for several hours, it's probably Maka. And because he is never one to be outdone, he jumps on board with her plan, and spends the rest of the afternoon focused on watching the snow instead of the sky.

"She seems happier today," Tsubaki murmurs to him about five hours into their hike. Black*Star chalks it up to a good night's sleep. He's absolutely positive that a good night's sleep is a god's greatest treasure. Tsubaki seems to think he can sleep anywhere, but he knows there has to be a certain _je ne sais quoi_ about a place for him to really conk out. He doesn't really know what that means – Soul said it to him once and he likes the sound of it, so he's been using it ever since. Anyway, apparently Sweden's got all of the good _quoi_.

In any case, Maka does seem happier, but to him, there's still something about her that feels muted, like he's watching a less-than-Maka that's going through the motions but is still holding back from something.

She's definitely a little bit better, however, because her lightness, after a heavy morning, has manifested itself in the very annoying habit that Maka often adopts when she is excited about something: reciting _factoids_.

"Did you know you can see the Northern Lights from as far south as Scotland?" she says excitedly, another fact in a long sequence of Northern Lights-related tidbits that has escaped her since this morning.

"I didn't know that!" Tsubaki says for the tenth time, and Black*Star genuinely can't tell if she's doing it to be polite or if she's actually interested in this useless stream of information. Either way, she's encouraging it, but Black*Star is finding it progressively harder to encourage.

"Yeah!" Maka says, because when she is Encouraged, there's no stopping her. "And they also come in several colors – blue, and pink, and—

"Okay, _we get it_!" Black*Star says, throwing his hands up in the air and turning to her. "Give the Resident Nerd bit a rest, will you? We're gonna see them tomorrow night anyway."

He thinks that only Maka will be pissed, but the looks that he's getting from Tsubaki and Soul are almost rivalling her irritation level, which he honestly hadn't anticipated.

"Chill, Black*Star," Soul says. "If she wants to talk about it, she can—"

"I know this is driving you crazy, too," Black*Star says, because he _knows_ Soul's factoid fuse is shorter than his.

Maka, on the other hand, is recoiling like a frightened animal, like she might burst into tears, and he's worried that he might have to do the unforgivable and actually apologize. But instead, surprisingly, she does something she normally does. She straightens up, a switch flips, and she's livid.

"No," she says, eyes flashing as she pulls herself up to her full height, fists balled. "I won't stop, and you can't make me. Did you know the Northern Lights are caused by solar wind? And that they help absorb solar radiation? And that they normally occur between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.?! And-"

"Are you trying to attack me with _facts_?!" Black*Star exclaims. "No way. If you're gonna fight me, let's do it on even ground. Let's fight."

"I can fight you however I want, you _started it_!" She's starting to yell, now, and when her voice breaks a little, realization hits him.

"… You haven't gotten mad yet, have you?" he says, watching her. "Since it happened. You haven't gotten to yell and scream and really get _pissed_ , have you?" Tsubaki and Soul's eyes latch onto him, and he knows Tsubaki, at least, is trying to silently drag him back from what he's about to do. But he knows Maka, too, and in many ways, he might know her anger better than anything else.

"I'm mad _now_ ," she says shrilly, anger making her words sharp. "Happy?"

"Yeah, good," he says, taking a step closer to her. "Get mad! Get so mad that you can't deal with it! Let's take it to the top of that hill-" He points to a hill to their right, craggy rock exposed in bits beneath spots of white. "And just _scream_."

"Hey, uh," Soul says. "We have like, a schedule, and we probably shouldn't, y'know, be trying to run up random mountai-"

" _Stay out of it, Soul_ ," Maka snarls, and Soul throws his hands up in resignation.

"Worth a try," he mutters as Tsubaki pats his shoulder.

Before Black*Star fully turns back to Maka, a competitive burst behind her eyes sends her tearing across the ground, anger propelling her towards the hillside as sparkling snow curtains whip behind her in the wind.

"Hey, no fair!" Black*Star shouts, running after her, leaving Soul and Tsubaki to fend for themselves in the snow.

She's fast, but he's got quads the size of baby pigs, and he almost catches up to her as she makes it to the incline of the hill. They scramble up side-by-side, and although she halfheartedly kicks at him a few times, he knows she won't really knock him down. When they leap over the crest of the hill, resting on its rounded top, they're both panting slightly.

"Still mad?" he asks, sprawled on his back on the rock.

"Yes," she grits, sitting up and glaring at him.

"Good," he says. "Why?"

"Because you're an _ass_."

"100% true," he says with a thumbs up. "Why else?"

She pauses. "Because you didn't want to listen to my facts."

He jumps to his feet, which honestly leaves him a little winded, not that he'd ever show it. "Yes, I hate facts! They're the worst! But why else! _Get pissed_ , Maka! We're here, and there's nobody else to hear you scream! Let's go!"

He watches her redden, because she knows what he means, and she's already angry, and this is something they are both good at: letting their anger simmer, broil until it breaks the surface, and when it breaks, the floodwaters rage forth. He watches the temperature rise, and waits for her to spill over.

" _I'm mad because I'm lost!"_ she explodes.

He waits.

"I'm mad because she's not here!" she continues, eyes slamming shut. "And because she was _never_ here! She was _never_ where she was supposed to be! Are you happy?!"

He opens his mouth to answer this, but as she turns to the sky, he realizes that maybe she isn't talking to him anymore.

"Are you happy?" she yells again, snowflakes coming to rest in her hair as she faces the wind. "You wanna know the worst part? _I miss you anyway!_ I miss you _so much_ that I don't know what to do with myself! Why aren't you here? _Why did you leave me?_ "

She stills, then, and after a moment, she turns to Black*Star with a grim expression. "I see what you mean," she says. He stares at her, entirely unsure of what she means.

"C'mon," she says, waving him over. "Let's just _yell about it_."

Yelling is, admittedly, one of his favorite things, so he walks to her side with a grin, and that's what they do.

They scream. They scream until their lips start to freeze, until the wind screams back at them, its own bitter anger clawing at their faces. They scream because it's easy to scream when your mother is missing - had _been_ missing for as long as they could both remember - and the bitterness that she leaves behind cannot be dislodged with tears alone. They scream because they are fighters, because they are strong, strong of their _own_ making, their own efforts, and _look what we did without you, what we didn't need you for_. Because the strength within them is too much to bear, and if they hold it all in, they'll explode. Screaming keeps them from sealing everything in, from bursting into dust like the curtains of ice that cascade down the glassy mountainside.

For someone who hates learning, this is something he's _had_ to learn: when you are too angry to cry, screaming gets the job done.

He has to endure Soul and Tsubaki's chew-out when they come back down, but Maka's got a color in her cheeks that wasn't there before.

"I'm still gonna tell you more facts tonight," she mutters to him as they start walking again.

"Bring it on," he chuckles, and they set off into the snow.

* * *

"Dude, Maka, just come out," Black*Star says.

"I'm not risking it," she shoots back, tent fabric muffling her voice.

"It's _cloudy_ ," Soul says. "C'mon, there's a warm fire out here. I promise if we see the Lights we'll throw you back into the tent."

A moment of silence. "Are there s'mores?"

Soul unzips the tent a tiny bit at the bottom and sticks half of a wrapped Hershey bar in through the opening.

Another moment of silence, followed by the second half of a Hershey bar slowly sliding into the tent. "Okay, I'm coming."

The firelight is warm after a day of frigid temperatures, although the chilly night still threatens to encroach into their little circle of heat. They fight against it with chocolate and light conversation.

"Hey, Black*Star," Maka says after a while, staring at the fire. "Do you remember when we climbed up on the spires at the Academy, when we were little?"

"Of course!" he says, nearly jumping to his feet at the thought of doing it again. "That's the first time I ever made it on the roof!"

"Only because Maka cracked the code on the door for you," Tsubaki laughs, because she knows this story well.

"Yeah, it was awesome!" he echoes. "And we got up there and Sid was so mad and had to come up and get us down. It was the best!"

"I almost didn't go up with you," Maka says, her voice lowering as she glances at her boots. "I kept saying, 'What if I fall?'"

"But you didn't!" he said. "And we got the best view of the whole city!" He leans over to Soul for a fist bump, which is halfheartedly returned, although he does give an approving smirk.

"I didn't," she agrees. She pauses. "Do you remember what you said to me? I thought about it for a long time after that."

"Uh." He scratches his head. "Nope! But I'm not surprised. My advice is pretty _je ne sais quoi."_ He looks over at Soul and wiggles his eyebrows.

"That's not how you…" Soul starts, and then sighs, putting his face in his hands. "Whatever."

Maka and Tsubaki both glance at each other and smirk, but Maka plows on in spite of his sophisticated French interruption.

"You said something like, 'What do you mean 'what if I fall?' That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What difference does it make? What do you get for _not_ coming up here? No sweet view, no bragging rights, no Black*Star telling everyone how great Maka is for getting on the roof. Also, it'll probably piss off your dad.'"

The other three laugh. "I can imagine that," Soul says.

"I remember, it was nighttime, and the whole city was glowing," she continues. "And I remember thinking… I can't believe I almost didn't come up here. And I thought, maybe some things are worth the risk. Some things are bigger than the fear of the fall."

They sit in silence for a moment, and Black*Star watches small smiles appear on Soul and Tsubaki's faces as they exchange a glance.

"So what you're saying is," Black*Star says, face morphing into a conspiratorial grin. "We should climb on the roof again when we get home."

Maka looks up at him and doesn't quite smile, but her eyes glow in the light of the fire. "Sure, Black*Star. I'd like that."

"Sweet," he says, cracking his knuckles.

Maka starts to say something else, but then shakes her head instead, gloves curling around the ends of her chair. Nobody presses her, so they sit together in silence, watching the flames until they crackle to embers. Eventually they decide to part ways, toss snow on the logs and slip back into their tents to sleep.

Tsubaki whispers to him, as they're going to sleep, that Maka's mom had loved snowmen.

"Of course she did," he says. "Everyone loves snowmen."

"I... think it meant a lot," she says. "That you made one with Maka today."

Oh. "Oh," he says.

"I just thought you should know… I think you're a pretty good friend, Black*Star." He can sense her smile in the darkness.

"Of course I am!" he laughs, but he mentally stutters at the compliment. Well, he does his best, anyway.

After all, he doesn't do anything halfway - especially not friendship. Even when all he has to give are screams and snowmen.


	5. Soul

Soul lies on his back in the tent, watching the lines in the fabric crisscross one another, and thinks of the day ahead.

It's day three. Day three of their mission that isn't a mission - but it also kind of _is_ , because there's still a darkness to fight, a battle to be won.

And she's winning.

It's day three of watching some of the tension ease from her shoulders, of watching the darker parts of her eyes begin to brighten. It's incremental, and things are far from being magically okay, but there's a change in her.

If Black*Star had told him a year ago that he could effectively cheer up Maka via _mountaintop shouting contest_ , he wouldn't have believed him. But here she is, packing up a sleeping bag in that typical All-Business Maka way that he hasn't seen in many moons.

When she snaps at him to quit spacing out and fold up his bag, he almost starts to smile.

The road is long, and there's still a ways to go, he reminds himself as he rolls his bag up and stuffs it in its pouch. She's opening back up slowly, delicately, and Soul's worried, afraid that it's too early, that the cold will catch up with her and drive her away from him again.

Because when she's hurting, he's hurting. It's simple, really, the way his feelings are so completely entwined with hers. He doesn't think much of it anymore; it's no longer a strange concept for him, this ever-present string of emotion that she's managed to wind around him. He feels what she feels, and that's it.

In this way, the past few months have brought a different sort of pain for him. It's not as cutting or prevalent as hers, but he's been there with her nonetheless, his own pain muted but compatible, in its own way. Like harmony to melody.

As she ducks out of the tent for a second, he reaches under his pillow and slips a book with streaks of blue, pink and purple night sky on the cover back into her bag. When she pops her head back in, he jumps.

"Almost ready?" she asks, because when business mode enters her voice, it isn't going anywhere for awhile. Wide-eyed, he nods and tries to keep his Textbook Guilty Conscience face appropriately concealed.

When she leaves, he lets out a breath and tosses his backpack out of the tent.

They've got six hours left, he hears her say, and she wants to make it there in time for lunch, so they wrangle their things together and set off for the final leg of their trek.

* * *

As they walk, for the first time in probably his whole life, he thinks about something that a book has taught him. It makes him think about something else, something he hasn't thought of in a while.

Maka loves fireworks.

It's something he pushes away because it is the worst kind of distraction, the sort of thing he doesn't allow himself to think about anymore, or at least too often.

He's known since they were twelve. There was some event; some Academy function she'd dragged him to, and they'd sat on the roof, wedged between the rest of their not-yet-Spartoi comrades. There had always been something about fireworks that made him cringe - loud noises don't appeal to the part of him that loves the quiet - but since that night, he's learned to appreciate them a little more, because during the finale, he'd turned to see Maka's face, all lit up in a million different hues, and watched as wonder etched itself into every curve of her features, every freckle illuminated on her cheeks.

He probably should have realized, back then, that he was in trouble.

A couple of years later, he'd asked her why she liked fireworks so much, and she laughed.

"I don't know," she'd mused. "Maybe because they're unpredictable? It's like... every show, every burst of color is different and new." She'd grinned at him suddenly. "And it's nice, because the shape and form don't matter to me. They're all beautiful."

He hates (okay, and sort of loves) when she uses his old words against him. He had pinked and rubbed his neck, and she kept smiling at him, but she dropped the subject.

The next time they watched fireworks, she'd reached out for his hand, wrapping her fingers around his. It felt so different from holding hands in battle, and he remembers being glad for the darkness, because his face was hot and the thought of her seeing him flustered was totally unacceptable in every universe. Nonetheless, he had immediately amended his previous claims about fireworks and their uncoolness.

He's been in trouble ever since.

The rest of the walk is relatively flat, so they hike their backpacks up and shoulder through it, shielding their eyes against the midmorning sun as it bounces off the snow. Within a few hours, a collection of buildings appears on the horizon.

As they make their way into town, their eyes pass over tiny strip malls, gas stations, and autopart stores. It's hard to for him to believe that there could've ever been evil lurking in this town, quiet and weirdly charming as it is.

They're searching for a place to have lunch, and Maka's eyes find it before his do. Her step falters for a moment before she walks up to it, and he knows their lunch plans are made. In bold white letters - in English, no less - are the words: Mama's Steakhouse.

"Huh," Soul says, and Maka turns around to face him with misty eyes again, but there's a little bit of mirth swimming in them, too.

"It's not curry," she says after a moment. "But it's good enough?"

A smile pulls at the corners of his lips. "Yeah. It'll do."

The interior of the place is rustic: a payphone at the back, rips in the booth cushions, neon beer signs on the walls. But it feels cozy, in a way, like an old haunt, a place to go when you're missing home that almost makes you feel like you're there. There's no lunch rush in rural Sweden, so they shuffle into a booth in the corner. A waitress comes around to take their order, and then leaves them to their own devices.

"Alriiight, we made it!" Black*Star says, punching the air with his fist. "What's the plan?"

"We'll have lunch here, and then we just have a little more walking to do," Maka says. "We're headed up to the top of the mine, and then we'll camp out until late."

"...And then?" Tsubaki asks.

"And... then we walk," Maka replies, and Soul can sense it in her, that determination that summons him to her, draws him in. She's so _close_ , and he knows what she's looking for, what she hopes to find in secrets that lie in the sky.

The waitress brings their food and they eat in silence, and Soul thinks that if the past ten years have taught him anything about Maka, it's that if anyone can find what she's looking for, she will. She won't stop until she does, and he, like the dependable little tagalong he is, won't leave her side until she's found it.

"Ugh, gooood food," Black*Star says after they've finished, patting his belly. "That meal was totally _je ne sais quoi._ "

"Dude, you're _killing me_ ," Soul says, pushing his food away so he can rest his face on the table and properly hide from his mistakes.

"What, was that wrong again?!" Black*Star asks. "I swear it's always right in my head!"

"Uh huh," Soul says, and Black*Star's about to retort before Maka puts her hand on his shoulder.

"Down, boy," she says, and Black*Star grunts and falls begrudgingly silent. They watch her shuffle her shoulders around a little, chewing on how to say something.

"Hey, so, I wanted you guys to know something," she says. "What I was going to say, last night, when we were talking about climbing on the roof, was… for a long time, I thought Mama was the one who taught me to be brave. But I think maybe, I wasn't quite right about that. I think maybe… some other people might have taught me about that, too."

Her eyes move from Black*Star to Tsubaki to Soul, pausing for a minute on each of them. When their eyes meet, he's caught between embarrassment and pride, because what is she saying? _He's_ not brave at all. But she's looking at him anyway. Soul, who shirks his family responsibilities because they're too daunting. Soul, who avoided his homework all through school because not making an effort is less terrifying than trying and failing.

 _Soul, who jumps in front of me to protect me like it's nothing,_ he can imagine her saying as she smiles at him.

She sees something in him that is deeper than what he sees in himself, something that is worth protecting despite his darkness. It's infuriating and flattering and heartwarming all at once - which is the way she generally makes him feel, if he's honest.

He scoffs, prickling. She doesn't get it. Doesn't she know that _she's_ the one who makes him brave?

Soon after, they get up to pay at the register, and as they're standing in line, a small bookcase by the exit catches Maka's eye and she walks over to it, inspecting the potential reading material.

He's always got a weather eye on her, something that years of battle training just so happened to leave him with, so he notices when she stiffens, staring at something in the other corner by the door that he can't see. His legs are carrying him over to her before he can even tell them to move.

"What is-" He stops, because he follows her gaze, and he can see. In a small display case, one of those metal cylindrical ones that you can spin around, sits a number of postcards, and in the very top slot, there is a blue, pink, and green swirl of color that is uncannily familiar.

"Soul…" she whispers, reaching out to take the card with a shaking hand. "Do you think…"

He looks down at the card in her hands, and he doesn't know for sure, because there's probably a million places in this town that one could get this very specific Northern Lights postcard.

"Dunno," he murmurs, but instinct is something he trusts to his very bones, more than he trusts almost anything else, and as soon as he says it, he finds it easy to imagine.

He can see how, in the appropriately-named Mama's Steakhouse, a mother might sit in the corner, enjoying a meal, reminiscing over past lives, thinking about her daughter.

"You think?" he asks.

She swallows hard, and there are tears in her eyes again as she looks up at him. "I think..." she says, "that there's someone I want to talk to."

Before he can blink, she's running past him, into the back, and squeezing into the little booth where the payphone is. He walks back over to Tsubaki and Black*Star, and the three of them watch her as she fiddles for change in her bag.

She's in a rush, dialing the number as quickly as she can. When she starts to speak, he can hear what she says from across the room, and he smiles.

"Hey, Papa?" Maka says breathlessly, clutching the phone to her ear. "No, hold on, this is important. Everything's fine. I can't talk long. I'm just calling to say… I love you."

* * *

Before he knows it, they're back in the icy tundra again, watching the 4:00 p.m. sunset next to their campsite. Maka's standing beside him, wearing that same expression she wears when she watches fireworks: awed, inspired, open.

He tries not to watch her too closely, because he imagines that he probably looks the same way.

"Mama loved sunsets," she says softly. "Did I ever tell you that?"

Despite the cold, there's a warmth that spreads through him as he thinks of things he has learned, and of things that make sense, and the pieces continue to click together in his head as he shakes his head and says, "Of course she did."

The evening passes slowly, and they are stuck in their tents tonight because the sky is clear and the Lights will be out, sometime. But Maka wants to go at midnight, so here they are, lying on their backs, staring at the tent and waiting.

He expects the evening to be quiet, with Maka mentally preparing for what's to come, which is just fine with him. But, as usual, she throws everything for a loop instead.

"Hey, Soul?" she asks, and he turns around. "I'm… I'm sorry."

He sits up and stares at her. "Uh. What?"

"I'm sorry," she repeats. "I... haven't been very good at keeping my promise, have I?"

His mind skips back to a dark bedroom, to an uttered contract of _I can do that_ , and Blair, the uninvited witness, slipping away into the darkness.

She's watching him, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn't know _what_ to say, so he slumps over sideways and tries to take refuge on his sleeping bag. It doesn't work.

"Ugh, Maka," he finally says, eyes fixed on the tent ceiling. "This whole thing has been so shitty. I just… I just wanted to be there for you however I could." She nods, and he's glad this seems to be sufficient, as he's not sure what else he could possibly say.

"I wasn't being fair," she hedges, hands around her knees. "I know… you weren't her biggest fan."

She's not wrong; he'd made his opinions on Mama Albarn pretty well known throughout their time together. He just couldn't get past how she could be gone all the time when she should have been there for Maka.

He knows what it's like to have not-ideal parents, too. But he and Maka react in such different ways: he breaks away, and she holds on.

"I didn't think you'd understand," she continues. "Nobody else does." She gets up, scooting closer to him. "Some days… some days _I_ don't even understand," she admits.

He raises an eyebrow at this. She pushes onward. "I was… so sad. I'm still so sad. And I just imagined everyone thinking 'How can you miss someone who was never even around?' And some days I wonder if they're right. How can I love her so much, when I saw her so little?"

This, actually, is an easy answer for him. Because he knows this feeling so _well_.

It is easy, _too_ easy to love someone you've placed on a pedestal. It is easy to want something so much that the wanting becomes a part of you, because you know how wonderful they are, how much you want to be like them. And so you spend half your life hoping that they'll see the best parts of you, find the value in them.

It is exhausting, hoping to be worthy of their love. It might be stupid, and misguided, and it might be the hardest, most uphill struggle of your life, but it's a choice that is made, and once you make that choice:

"It doesn't matter," he says, holding her gaze. "You love her."

She watches him, and all at once, he both wants and doesn't want her to hear him. The duality makes his head spin, and he puts it to the side, like he always does. Pushes away what he wants to say, tucks it away under lock and key, and waits a little longer.

He is good at waiting, after all.

"...I do," she finally says, and he doesn't want to think about dualities lurking in her words either, not when pain distorts everything, makes it blurry and impossible to read.

"She loved you, too," he says instead. "You know that."

A tear spills down her cheek. "I… I know. It's still nice to hear it, though."

She reaches out for him then, and he slides toward her almost magnetically, anticipating the rush of relief that encompasses him when she pulls his arms around her. They sit there in silence for a while, her head cradled in his shoulder, cold nose buried in his neck.

"I don't think she heard me," she says, and he looks down at at her. "Yesterday, on the hill," she adds. "I couldn't… I couldn't feel her there."

"Can't blame her for that," he says. "I'd be hiding from your wrath, too, if I had the chance."

She blanches and smacks him on the shoulder.

"I just..." she says, looking back up at him, and her face is so close. "I hope I can see her. In the lights. I… I hope I can say goodbye."

He lets out a small sigh, and brings a hand up to tug on a pigtail. "I think you will."

"You sound so sure," she says, surprised.

"Well, yeah, cause she know-" He stops. "Ugh, it's so _corny_ ," he groans. Now that he's about to say it, he's balking.

"Too late," she says, and her face is so _close_ as she pulls away and looks at him. "Out with it. Everyone already knows you're a huge squishy sap, anyway."

Soul prickles at this, because _how dare she_ ; he is neither squishy nor sap, and especially not both. But he takes a deep breath and turns away from her, swiveling so that they're seated back-to-back, facing opposite sides of the tent. "Fine," he says. "Only if I don't have to look at you, though."

He can almost hear her roll her eyes on the other side of his shoulders. "You're so dramatic. Tell me why."

"Ugh… fine."

Because there was someone else who knew what he knows.

"Because she knew… she knew you loved fireworks."

"...What?" she asks.

"She knew that you loved fireworks," he says again, impatiently wringing his hands. He can tell she is not content with this explanation, so he is forced to elaborate. "And that's one of the nicknames for the Northern Lights, isn't it? Nature's Fireworks, or whatever?" He points to the book at the top of her open bag, which sits in the corner of the tent.

"You… read my book?" she asks, disbelieving.

" _Skimmed_ ," he says. She's going to milk this, he knows it, and he regrets ever bringing it up, but he's just _so sure_ that he's right about this. He scowls at the tent zipper. The potential for escape is tempting, but he won't use it. The rest of it comes tumbling out before he can help it.

"She knew you loved fireworks, and you just told me like _two hours ago_ that she loved sunsets, and I just feel like there's this dumb mother-daughter sky-nature synergy _bullshit_ going on, and… ugh. I just think you'll find her, okay?"

He's mentally cringing, filled with revulsion at this totally sappy and/or squishy train of thought he's just unveiled, which is why he is caught completely off guard when she turns and throws her arms around him from behind.

"Ugh, c'mon Maka," he says, because he is the wannabe-master of feigned disgust, but she's not buying it, and she only squeezes tighter.

"I think you might be right," she says. "Wanna know why?"

"Why?" he says, trying to sound weary, and he adds it to the list of Things That Maka Isn't Buying as she spins him around.

"There's one more _fact_ I keep thinking about," she says, and she's smiling more widely than he's seen her do in so long, and his heart is aching as the joy in her eyes fills him up.

Their gazes are locked and, in that infamously not-squishy-not-sappy way of his, he's thinks that he's never seen such a lovely shade in all of his life.

"The most common color of the Northern Lights," she says, "is green."


	6. Maka

The road is long, but she'll never stop climbing.

When the little timer she's placed on her sleeping bag goes off at 11:30, Maka grabs Soul's hand, unzips the tent, and they both slip out. Black*Star and Tsubaki are already there, waiting for her, smiles dancing on their faces. There's a spectral hint of green in the sky that catches her eye, but she won't look up. Not yet.

 _They_ will never stop climbing, she thinks as she looks at them all. Nothing could keep them from this goal they've set, from this mission that they've set out to accomplish together, that she had somehow wanted to do alone. But now, she knows she wound up discovering more about herself with them, _through_ them, than she ever would have on her own. She's so grateful for them, these stubborn, strong, quietly loyal people that make up… her family.

"Let's go," she says with a smile as she walks past them, and they fall in step behind her.

They set off together, eyes focused on the snow, but she can sense the expanse of color that sweeps above them. As she watches the ground, she can almost see reflections of it in the snow.

Maka looks up for a moment to find the tip of the mountain, the viewpoint they're aiming for, and it is distant. Suddenly it's like she's back on the turret of that tower at the Academy, vulnerable before a city of lights, and she is afraid. She has so much to be afraid of.

 _What if I can't reach her?_ _What if it isn't enough?_

But Maka's strong, too. And fear is with her always; it lives in the shadows of her heart, and like Soul and the black blood, it is an integral part of her being. Something she will face several more times this week, let alone in her lifetime.

Besides, this is something she learned a long time ago. Some things are bigger and more beautiful than fear.

They push through the snow, wind biting at their faces, and in due time they make it to the end of the mountain path where a huge expanse of earth spreads out before them, cliff face dropping tens of meters to the bottom of the canyon.

She turns to them with a smile and, throwing hesitation to the wind, says, "Okay, ready? Look up."

It's brighter than she imagined. So much more vivid and _true_ : pink, purple, blue, and green in an intricate dance of hues above the snow.

From her spot on the side of the cliff, she knows she should feel small. But she doesn't. She feels immense, like she could pick the universe up and put it in her pocket, take on any fear that tries to block her path.

She almost laughs as she wonders if this is the way Black*Star feels all of the time.

Sensing Soul's presence behind her, she reaches out, tearing her eyes from the sky for a moment to take in the feeling of his gloved hand against hers. She can see reflections of the tapestry of greens and pinks and blues in Soul's eyes, and there is a peacefulness, a purposefulness that sweeps through her as she turns to look up again.

She can feel it. There's a guiding light in the sky, and at her side, and all around her, and she can feel it in her soul, the bitter cold of what she's lost being thawed, warmed from the inside out.

Her eyes burn as she watches the sky swirl, a multicolored symphony. And she might be imagining it, but she can feel her, there, in that moment. She knows it like she knows the feel of Soul's handle in her grasp, like she knows the sound of a soul unraveling before her eyes.

In the silence, on a mountainside, beneath the fireworks display they've been promised, she squeezes Soul's hand again, and they listen to a whisper in the night.

It's soft, like a kiss on a baby's forehead as they fall asleep. Gentle, like weathered hands on thin hair as they pull it into pigtails. Strong, like a woman who won't be told how to live her life, and sweet, fleeting, like someone who's writing just to say hello, because they love you.

"H-Hey, Mama," Maka whispers, eyes bright with tears, green galaxies blurring above her. "I can hear you."

"I miss you," she continues, and through her tears she starts to smile. "But I'm gonna be okay. I'm not afraid anymore." Because she knows how to be brave, has learned it from the people all around her, all of the people who have given her a part of themselves.

"I… I know you probably can't stay long," she says, voice shaking. "So I just wanted to say, I see you in every sunset. I read you in every book." She can feel the tears falling now, thick and fast. "Y-You are a part of me forever. And I love you."

It _hurts_. The road is long, and the path is covered with ice, and she might fall, and she will hurt, and she will struggle. But these are the things that she is made of: she is a patchwork of pain and sweat and tears and boundless courage.

And love. More than anything else, she is made of love. She is made of the things her mother had loved: snowmen, sunsets. Things that she herself loves: flowers, fireworks, fancy gloves. She is the love she gives to others as roommate, daughter, friend, and partner, and the love they give her in return.

And love is stronger than fear.

She's learning to navigate this place of fear and uncertainty and sadness, the space between her determination where she finds doubt. She's hurting, but she feels so _alive_ , at this moment, standing on the freezing plateau, spellbound by the sky, amazed by the beauty of life, the cruelty of death, the crushing weight of losing and gaining, of living through heartbreak and coming out on the other side.

It hits her, as the wind moves on and they find themselves once again in the stillness, that she's the one who gets to decide what happens now.

Grief still hangs over her shoulders, and it will stay for a while. But there's a future calling out to her, a new place in the world that she yearns for, something uncertain but promising that she wants to work toward. She's not quite sure of anything, yet, and that's okay. But Maka's sure of one thing, she thinks as she thinks of her hot desert home, of things that are strong and tenacious, and beautiful and lovely.

She wants a place to plant marigolds in the summertime.

Wiping frozen tears off her cheeks, she turns toward her friends.

"Wanna build a fire?" she asks.

And so they do, and they sit, sharing stories about Mama, about Papa, about the things they used to do when they were small, the Lights rippling happily overhead as they talk.

When they finally head back down the mountain to begin the very long trek back home, she thinks of all of the people she loves, of all the people who depend on her, and she knows, in the very deepest parts of her heart, that falling isn't what she's destined for.

She decides that she's going to fly.

* * *

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you all soon. :) If it tickles your fancy, drop me a line and let me know what you thought! All my love :)


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